


left yourself in your warpath

by SiderumInCaelo



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Platonic Teacher-Student Relationship, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 00:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16650817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiderumInCaelo/pseuds/SiderumInCaelo
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Leta confesses to Professor Dumbledore why her boggart takes that shape.Spoilers forCrimes of Grindelwald.





	left yourself in your warpath

**Author's Note:**

> It should be clear from the tags and summary, but a lot of this fic is spent discussing the death of a child.
> 
> Title is taken from Taylor Swift's "Innocent."

Professor Dumbledore finds her after the lesson, even though she’s hiding in the best spot she knows – a deep windowsill in a rarely-used corridor, looking out over empty mountains.  He sits down next to her and says conversationally, “I’ve never seen a boggart take that form before.”

“Guess I’m just special, sir,” she replies, but she’s still shaken from the lesson and it lacks her usual bite.

“Would you like help thinking of a way to make it funny?  You can have another go at it in private, if that would help,” Dumbledore offers, but Leta shakes her head before he’s done speaking.

“I can’t,” she says flatly.  “It’s not the kind of fear you can laugh at.”

When she fails to elaborate, Dumbledore asks gently, “Leta, what are you so afraid of?”

She can’t tell him, she _knows_ she can’t tell him, but the fear that everyone is right, that she’s so awful that even her own twisted family doesn’t want her, is clawing her chest and she blurts out, “Have you ever done something terrible?  Not just bad, but… monstrous.”

Dumbledore pauses for a moment, but he doesn’t look taken aback by the question.  “Yes, I have.”

“And did you ever tell anyone what you’d done?” she challenges.

“No, I suppose I didn’t.”  He sighs.  “And if you don’t want to tell me I won’t pry.  But if you do - I know firsthand how hard it is to carry guilt around, and I have no room to judge.”

He looks at her expectantly, but when she stays silent, he just pats her shoulder and stands up.  “If you ever change your mind you know where to find me,” he adds, before walking away.

* * *

A week later finds Leta knocking on the open door to Dumbledore’s office.

“Do you have a minute, Professor?” she asks, and even in that moment she doesn’t know if she wants him to say yes or no.

“Of course, Leta.  Please, come in,” he says and she does, closing the door behind her and taking a seat in front of his desk.  “What can I help you with?”

But now that she’s here, Leta doesn’t know what to say, or even if she should say anything at all.  The guilt and loneliness eating at her have become unbearable, but she’s never told anyone what she did, always too scared of what they would think of her.

When she fails to say anything, Dumbledore prods, “Is it about your boggart?”

She nods, and then finds her words.  “If I tell you, do you promise it’ll stay between us?” she asks in a rush.

“If what you tell me gives me reason to believe you or someone else is in danger, and I have to get someone else involved to help, then I will,” he says steadily.  “But that is the only reason I would break your confidence.”

It isn’t the unequivocal _yes_ Leta wants, but it’ll do.  She takes a breath and decides it’s easier to start at the beginning.  “You’ve heard, I assume, the story of my parents.”

“Your mother was previously married to a Senegalese wizard, and she died in childbirth,” Dumbledore confirms.

“And?” asks Leta, well aware of the gossip that still swirls around her family.

“And the rumours say that she did not marry your father of her own volition,” he adds.

“The rumours are true.  She was a trophy to him, and he loved her no more than he loves me.”  She looks away from Dumbledore at that, not wanting to see the pity written across his face.  “But he loved my half-brother dearly.”

“Corvus.  He disappeared when he was still a baby, correct?”

“He died,” Leta corrects.  And I –” 

She pauses to swallow, her mouth suddenly full of saliva, then backtracks.  “My father was worried that the Kama family would seek revenge on him through Corvus, so he arranged for him to be hidden.  Our nanny took both of us to America, and was meant to leave Corvus with a new family, using forged adoption papers.

“There was a woman in a cabin near us who had a son the same age as Corvus.  A storm approached and everyone was distracted and I – I switched Corvus with him.”  Her tears spill over but she keeps talking, suddenly desperate to explain.

“I hated him.  He was only a baby but I _hated_ him, for having a mother who was alive and a father who loved him.  He had cried the whole trip, and I just wanted one minute where I didn’t have to hear him, or look at him, or think about him.”

Her tears are falling faster now, but she forces herself to finish the story.  “Our nanny found me when I was holding the other baby, and she pulled me to a lifeboat before I could put him back.  The other woman got into different lifeboat with Corvus, but it capsized.  I watched Corvus sink, wrapped in his blankets, as we rowed away.”

Her breaths turn to sobs even as she covers her mouth with her hands to muffle the noise.  She keeps her head down, not wanting to see whatever expression is on Dumbledore’s face, and doesn’t expect him to reach across the desk to offer her a handkerchief. 

She takes it and mops up her tears, still not looking at him, and is so distracted that she almost misses it when Dumbledore says softly, “Leta, his death wasn’t your fault.”

That gets her to look up, because he can’t possible mean that, but he continues.  “You couldn’t have known what would happen – it could have just as easily been your lifeboat that capsized.”

“I took him away from the only people who loved him because I was jealous.  What kind of person does that make me?” she retorts though hiccoughing sobs.

“You made a bad choice when you were younger because you wanted your father to love you.  And the fact that you’re crying about it, years later, tells me that you wouldn’t do it now.  You can’t undo the past, Leta, but you can be better in the future, and part of that is letting yourself move on from past mistakes.”

“Have you moved on from whatever you did, sir?” she asks, and she’s not sure if it’s because her instinctive reaction is to deflect, or because she really wants to know.

“My mistake was far less forgivable than yours,” he says but doesn’t elaborate, and Leta finds she is unexpectedly sympathetic.

“I’m sorry,” she offers.

“I am too,” he says with a sad smile.

She doesn’t know what else to say, but the silence feels comfortable, somehow.  Dumbledore knows the worst thing she ever did, and he doesn’t hate her, or think she’s doomed to be terrible person her whole life.  The guilt is still there, no matter what Dumbledore said about forgiveness and moving on, but its weight is lighter now.

Finally, when she's stopped sniffling and her eyes feel less puffy, she stands to leave.  “Er, do you want –” she asks, awkwardly holding out the used handkerchief, but he waves it away.

“I know it couldn’t have been easy to confide in me, but I hope it helped.  If you want to discuss it further, my door is always open,” he says.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Professor.  Thank you,” she replies, as earnestly as she can, before stepping out of the room.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Dumbledore and I love Leta and I love stories about teachers and students, so me writing this fic was probably inevitable.


End file.
